PSEUDO

A Canadian author incorporates themes of loss, betrayal, redemption, and hope in this short story collection.

Having published numerous short story anthologies, Speak reaffirms her grasp of the form with 12 resonant tales. The brilliant, darkly comic opener and one of the book’s standouts, “Rock Paper Scissors,” is a master class in characterization. The story introduces Alice, 60, who, despite being divorced and depressed, anchors a rudderless, dysfunctional band of walking disasters. These include her unemployed adult son; her philandering boss; a daughter and fiance desperately struggling with artificial insemination; her infirm mother; and a dying boyfriend. It is a seemingly hopeless situation peopled by the downtrodden. This type of scenario surfaces in other tales like “Wilderness,” about a husband who prepares his dying wife for assisted suicide, and “Lake of Many Islands,” in which a group of friends assembles for a weekend of unexpected revelations. The engrossing title story features a disillusioned, aging artist abandoned by her partner only to discover a new love—one just as bruised by life as she is—waiting on her doorstep. The author’s prose is blissfully lyrical and often descriptively sets each tale’s tone in a single sentence. Impatient people beaten down by a winter season stomp across a snowy sidewalk “with the teeth of their winter boots, they have assaulted it with their demand for spring”; folks consumed with soul-searching do so with the passion of “a detective out to find a missing person”; first snowflakes are as “large as goose feathers turning in the air, perfect and pure.” Speak’s stories champion aging underdogs, many addled by disease or discontent, and throughout their grief or despair, she demonstrates an acute sensitivity to their plights. Into tales that could become overly sentimental, she injects redemption and sacrifice, as evidenced in the collection’s best-realized entry, “Honour,” leavening what seems like perennial hopelessness with glimmers of fun, renewal, and promise. The author rises to the challenge of compiling a group of Canada-set stories that will enchant with the beautiful, diverse, and ever evolving essence of human nature. As one character adores another’s wrinkles and sees “all the beauty life has wrought in her face,” readers will appreciate how Speak translates life’s pain and struggles into beauty.

An impressive and luminous assemblage of artful and quietly devastating tales.